IT Best Practices and Challenges.

• Position: Information technology - Brief Article

Wonder why you're not reaping rewards from information technology investments? Latest data from ongoing IT trends and best practices studies reveal that the biggest culprits are obsolete organizational structures and mindsets that have kept most companies from realizing tangible results by automating operational processing and improving access to information.

"As emerging technologies make the promise of virtualization a reality, it's important to accept that change is cumulative. Companies can't expect to leapfrog their way to best practices in IT," says Richard T. Roth, managing director of Hackett Benchmarking & Research, a part of Answerthink Inc. Hackett has been conducting studies for more than a decade on IT, human resources, procurement, customer contact centers and related areas at more than 1,600 global organizations such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Cisco, Johnson & John son and Coca-Cola.

Among the highlights of the 2001 findings:

1. There is a critical need for organizations to apply proven best practices and techniques in IT, such as standardization, improved application integration and strategic prioritization. By relying on standards to reduce complexity and costs, top performers have reduced complexity and trimmed costs by nearly one-third.

2. At world-class companies, IT...